State and Ethnicity in China’s Southwest by Xiaolin Guo (review)

State and Ethnicity in China’s Southwest is an ambitious volume that examines statecraft and local politics from multiple perspectives dating from the Nanzhao era (738–902) to the mid-2000s, emphasizing fluidity and pragmatic adaptation of both those being governed and those attempting to influence their lives. Over the centuries discussed in the book, the interplay between the Chinese state, in its varying incarnations; its regional representatives; and those dwelling in mountainous regions of present-day northwest Yunnan and environs receives explicit attention. The book reframes discussions of ethnicity to include a more state-centered analysis, looking at both ethnic minorities and Han communities, one of the first volumes to examine state function in this area of China. While not the only ethnography focusing explicitly on the state in this region (Erik Mueggler’s The Age of Wild Ghosts [2001] comes to mind,¹ as does Thomas Mullaney’s recent publication Coming to Terms with the Nation [2011]²), this is the first to cast its focus with equal intensity on historical interactions and contemporary ethnic politics. Unlike the many single-group ethnographies of ethnicity in Southwest China, Guo’s work is explicitly comparative, both temporally and geographically.³

The study is at the nexus of political science and anthropology, grounded in historical anthropology. This leads to both positive outcomes and challenges. The author’s careful consultation of archival materials, gazetteers, and contemporary Chinese scholarship offers a strong contribution to understandings of the way early ethnic policies played out. She repositions ethnicity policy as part of a larger set of continuous state approaches to the problem of political integration, not an attempt at Sinicization, regardless of the particular governing authority. While historians may take issue with this generalization, noting distinctions from one era and one reign to the next in terms of minority policies, scholars of the southwest will appreciate the argument in part because it emphasizes the limited knowledge of, and engagement with, most smaller groups by the central state. This means that until the twentieth century, government engagements varied less than previously assumed.

Guo astutely points out that Han identity should be seen not as a stark opposition to ethnic minority identity, as is often assumed, but rather interpreted as “political power or economic dominance rather than to ethnic membership per se—it thus included individuals whose standing was perceived by the local community as markedly different from the local majority, irrespective of their ethnic backgrounds” (p. 67). By way of example, she describes literate Naxi and Bai, whose social mobility and power meant that Nu people, another one of the diverse region’s ethnic groups, took them for Han. Acculturation proceeded unevenly in the complex circumstances of Yunnan, where in some areas Han or other newcomers assimilated completely, and in others assimilation was prevented by local endogamy rules, as in the Cold Mountain Yi areas. Guo argues cogently for a place-based understanding of ethnicity informed as much by ecology and geography as by social structures and superficial ethnic markers.

Case Studies of Mosuo and Han Townships

Guo deserves praise for her detailed analysis of kinship, social structure, and economy in two areas: the Three River Basin, a fertile area whose history as the site of a Ming-era garrison is still evident in its predominately Han ethnic makeup (an anomaly within an area of ethnic diversity), and the unfortunately titled yet worthy chapter on “The Land of Women,” home to the group known today as Mosuo and Mongol. Following these two chapters are portraits of the counties that today encompass the Three River Basin and part of “The Land of Women,” Yongsheng, and Ninglang. These benefit from wonderfully candid interviews with government officials of those counties, whose remarks enliven the discussion of local-regional-national policies (although the discussion lacks the perspectives of villagers).

The chapters that sketch out kinship and economy in “The...